New on DVD for Aug. 20: Amour, Epic and more (with video)

Amour – Four stars out of five — Emanuelle Riva picked up an Oscar nomination for her part in this heartbreaking story steeped in the harsh reality of the human condition: death. Yet, as potent as her performance was, it’s really Jean-Louis Trintignant who did the bulk of the heavy lifting in this Michael Haneke film that won the best foreign film prize for 2012. Trintignant plays Georges, one half of the aging couple facing the final chapter in this poetic look at committed love. When his wife suddenly strokes out and begins to lose her ability to function, Georges is left to shuffle through the everyday chores in a surreal haze, knowing it will all soon come to a painful end that he can’t bear to confront. Haneke captures these last throes of love through Trintignant’s expressive face, and frames the sense of emotional loss with a gentle hand without turning to saccharine device or melodrama. A complete and devastating look at the many dimensions of death, Haneke quietly reminds us how beautiful life can be when it’s filled with love. Special features include Jean-Louis Trintignant talks about Amour, introduction by Philippe Rouyet.

Epic: Three and a half stars out of five — Every time we take a single step outside, we have a direct impact on the lives of thousands of tiny insects, invertebrates and other organisms that make life possible. We should revere these tiny creatures, but sadly, they’re just too small for us to care about in the same way as, say, a dog, or cat, or fuzzy wuzzy bunny. Ice Age’s Chris Wedge attempts to bridge this big-small divide in Epic, a big story about the microscopic. Using a human, latter-day Alice in Wonderland as our hero, we shrink to the size of a bug and follow Mary Katherine (Amanda Seyfried) on a quest to help the Leafmen (protectors of all life in the forest) battle the Boggans (the source of death and rot). With Christoph Waltz playing the bad guy and Colin Farrell playing the good guy, everything unfolds according to the animated movie plan, but Epic has a few nice twists that give it a little something extra in the avalanche of kids’ fare, including a three-legged family dog with cataracts. Few child-oriented films have the guts to show us the decline and scars of life, but Epic embraces the tough stuff without flinching or fanfare, making it feel altogether natural — which means the film succeeds at a deeper level. Special features include Mub and Grub introduction, Birds, Bugs and Slugs Forest Explorer, Rot Rocks — a look at how rot benefits the world, Bugs of Camouflage, The Epic Life at Two Inches Tall, the making of Epic, trailer, interactive drawing feature, DVD and Blu-ray combo pack, and more.

What Maisie Knew: Two stars out of five — You have to hand it to Julianne Moore for making this movie watchable, because without her, you’d have to wonder why it ever got made. A humourless and somewhat inane affair that takes itself all-too-seriously, this film from Scott McGehee and David Siegel centres on a custody battle over young, somewhat skeletal Maisie (Onata Aprile) — a little girl who seems really sweet, but has about five lines over the course of the entire film. When we meet her, she’s living with her rock ’n’ roll mom (Moore) and her British twit of a dad (Steve Coogan), but most of the daily routine is attended to by her au pair. When dad takes off with the nanny, mom is left to take on a bartender beau (Alexander Skarsgard) to help her get by, but things don’t go so well as the battle over who gets Maisie heats up — and the reality of single-parenthood sinks in. Most of the action feels untenable, but maybe some parents really are as selfish as these narcissistic dumb-dumbs who forget to pick up their kids for days and days, without even wondering where they may be. Thanks to Moore, who channels a Courtney Love style desperation, it almost works. But not really. On the upside, the Manhattan apartments are very cool, and Coogan plays a selfish twerp better than anyone. Special features include director’s commentary and deleted scenes.

The Shining Anniversary Edition: Four stars out of five — I don’t care what the scholars and the fan kids have to say about the hidden meanings, the back-to-front stuff and the conspiracy theories embedded into this classic piece of psychological horror. I love this movie because it burned itself into memory the first time I saw it in a theatre, and forever made me terrified of becoming a novelist suffering from writer’s block. Even as I type the words “All work and no play…” I can feel the shiver of Jack Nicholson’s asymmetrical glare through the splintered bathroom door. In other words, the imagery and the story connect in a way that reaches a level of primal fear, perhaps the toughest thing for any director to conjure, but something Stanley Kubrick seemed capable of doing in his tormented sleep. In this anniversary edition of the master’s classic, special features include audio commentary, Vivian Kubrick’s documentary on the making of The Shining, as well as new featurettes: View from the Overlook: Crafting The Shining, The Visions of Stanley Kubrick, and Wendy Carlos, Composer. This new edition also includes a time-limited digital download option.